Introduction¶
What is Coink?¶
Coink is an IoT piggy bank.
In the 21st Century piggy banks can be very easily connected to the cloud and become part of the rapidly growing Internet of Things.
Having automatic reports of your savings online is not only very convenient but can also make saving fun for kids! With Coink you can have real-time graphics with your cumulative savings as well as the recent daily savings to track your progress.
Adults may use it as well, not only for fun, but to help them quit smoking, for example, keeping track of the money they save each day. Or in bars and restaurants, to keep track of the tips they get each day.
Of course the magnetic coin detection system can be used elsewhere: in vending machines, arcade game machines… The cloud-connected piggy bank is just an application.
What do we need?¶
In order to build Coink, we will need:
- A wooden box.
- A 3D-printed ramp [1].
- A magnet attached to the ramp, that generates a static magnetic field.
- A 3D Magnetic Sensor 2GO [2] board from Infineon, that will detect the changes on the magnetic field when a coin passes through the ramp and in between the magnet and the sensor.
- An ESP8266-based board, in particular a NodeMCU development kit [3], that reads the data from the 3D magnetic sensor through I2C and sends it through WiFi to the cloud.
- A cloud server [4] that analyzes the raw data and identifies the different coins.
Coink project overview